A26 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2020
BY PETER WHORISKEYThe world’s chocolate compa-
nies depend on cocoa produced
with the aid of more than 1 mil-
lion West African child laborers,
according to a new report spon-
sored by the Labor Department.
The findings represent a re-
markable failure by leading choc-
olate companies to fulfill a long-
standing promise to eradicate the
practice from their supply
chains.
Under pressure from Congress
in 2001, some of the world’s
largest chocolatiers — including
Nestlé, Hershey and Mars —
pledged to eradicate “the worst
forms of child labor” from their
sources in West Africa, the
world’s most important supply.
Since then, however, the firms
have missed deadlines to elimi-
nate child labor in 2005, 2008
and 2010.
Each time, they have promised
to do better, but the new report
indicates that the incidence of
child labor in West African cocoa
production has risen.
A Washington Post investiga-
tion of the use of child labor in
the cocoa industry found that
representatives of some of the
biggest and best-known brands
could not guarantee that any of
their chocolate was produced
without child labor. One reason is
that 20 years after pledging to
eradicate the practice, chocolate
companies still could not identify
the farms where all their cocoa
comes from, let alone whether
child labor was used in produc-
ing it.
The prevalence of child labor
among agricultural households
in cocoa-growing areas of Ivory
Coast and Ghana, the two pri-
mary suppliers, increased from
31 percent to 45 percent between
2008 and 2019, according to the
Labor Department survey con-
ducted by NORC at the Univer-
sity of Chicago.
Nearly 1.6 million children
were engaged in child labor in
cocoa production, according to
the survey, and most of thosewere involved in tasks considered
hazardous, such as wielding ma-
chetes, carrying heavy loads or
working with pesticides. Because
of changes in methodology, the
number of child laborers in the
new survey is not comparable
with that of the first survey,
researchers said. The surveyors
defined child laborers as those
children working below the age
of 12, or children between 12 and
18 years old who work beyond
allowable hours, or any children
taking part in hazardous tasks.
“As this report shows, there are
today still too many children in
cocoa farming doing work for
which they are too young, or
work that endangers them,” said
a statement from Richard Scobey,
president of the World Cocoa
Foundation, an industry group
representing companies han-
dling about 80 percent of the
world’s cocoa supply chain.
In addressing the report,
Scobey identified no industry
failures.
The targets “were set withoutfully understanding the complex-
ity and scale of a challenge heavi-
ly associated with poverty in
rural Africa,” he said in his state-
ment.
Several nonprofit groups
blame the companies, however,
for falling far short of the respon-
sibilities they assumed under
their pledge in 2001. They ques-
tion how an industry that rings
up an estimated $103 billion in
annual sales could have made so
little, if any, progress over 20
years.
In December, the Supreme
Court is expected to hear argu-
ments in a case against Nestlé
and Cargill involving a group of
Malians who say that as adoles-
cents, they were forced to work
on Ivory Coast cocoa farms.
Although the lawsuit and The
Post investigation focus on forced
child labor, often from children
brought in from other countries,
the figures in the new report do
not count those workers.
The “issue of forced child labor
in cocoa production is importantand deserves attention,” the re-
port said, but counting forced
child laborers would require a
different methodology.
Terrence Collingsworth, one of
the attorneys representing the
Malian plaintiffs, said the prob-
lem of child labor — forced or not
— arises because the 2001 pledge
from the companies entailed no
enforcement.
“These serious human rights
violations require mandatory
rules with serious penalties, not
empty promises from cocoa com-
panies profiting from the exploi-
tation of children,” he said.
Regarding the lawsuit, a Nestlé
statement said: “All involved
agree that Nestlé never engaged
in the egregious child labor al-
leged in this suit.”
Cargill has said it has taken
steps to monitor for and eradi-
cate child labor from its West
African suppliers.
In response to the new report,
the chocolate companies point to
programs they’ve set up to try to
monitor farms for child labor,and say they aim to expand those.
Jeff Beckman, a Hershey
spokesman, said that another
study by NORC shows that
“where company programs are in
place, child labor was reduced by
one-third, showing these pro-
grams are having a positive im-
pact.”
In response to the new survey,
Mars noted in a statement that it
has committed $1 billion to “help
fix a broken supply chain.”
“The problem of child labor is
bigger than any one entity, and
the solution must be grounded in
an unwavering commitment to
action and collaboration between
farmers, communities, civil soci-
ety, business, and government,”
the company said.
The new report, however,
stands as a dismal conclusion to
the high hopes inspired by the
2001 company pledge, which was
negotiated by Sen. Tom Harkin
(D-Iowa) and Rep. Eliot L. Engel
(D-N.Y.) and has become known
as the Harkin-Engel protocol.
[email protected]Study: Chocolate companies rely heavily on child labor
promotes the products, says
more consumers have been eat-
ing plant-based meals since the
pandemic began.
Tofurky, one of the longtime
soy-based turkey alternatives,
says it has seen a spike in early
holiday orders from its retail
partners.
Howard says Kroger’s family of
stores has increased selections of
plant-based proteins to meet the
growing demand for vegan, vege-
tarian and flexitarian options,
including meatless roasts.
Nicole Johnson, director of the
Butterball Turkey Talk Line, and
her colleagues have been prep-
ping for the holiday via the Teams
platform. This year’s seven rookie
experts are doing their preseason
kitchen and digital training re-
motely, tinkering with turkey-
cooking conundrums in their
own kitchens.
Johnson says in an average
year, they get 100,000 calls, texts
and chats, with 15,000 inquiries
on Thanksgiving Day alone. Each
of the talk-line experts work
nine- or 10-hour shifts on the big
day, answering the same ques-
tions: How do I thaw? Do I buy a
fresh or frozen bird? Do I need to
baste? Should I buy a meat ther-
mometer?
“I think we’re going to be
busier than ever,” she says. “With
smaller gatherings and people
not going out to restaurants, I
think our numbers are going to
soar. And I think part of our job
this year is trying to celebrate the
good.”
[email protected]more familiar proteins like ham,
beef, pork roast and seafood will
cut into turkey’s dominance, says
Kristal Howard, director of cor-
porate communications.
Pollard says the biggest change
will be people thinking a whole
turkey is “too much,” opting in-
stead for other entrees or for
turkey parts, which will shut out
farmers like Bowman.
“If that’s what they are doing,
they will likely be buying a more
industrialized bird. It’s more dif-
ficult for a small heritage farmer
to break a turkey down into
parts,” Pollard says.
Ariane Daguin, founder of pre-
mium meat company D’Artag-
nan, says the pandemic’s push
toward smaller birds continues a
subtle trend in recent years as
family units get smaller.
“Some people have gone down
to a duck or goose, but still, when
you’re talking about Thanksgiv-
ing this year, a huge majority of
Americans will stick with turkey,”
she says. “Everything is falling
apart, so we cling to tradition.”
She says many consumers will
buy just a turkey breast, if every-
body in the family likes white
meat, or a fully prepared dinner
from a retailer.
“If they don’t, they have to
accept having leftovers for 10
days,” she says.
Another trend that has been
supercharged by the pandemic
may also interfere with Ameri-
cans’ turkey-eating traditions:
the rise of plant-based meat sub-
stitutes. The Good Food Institute,
a nonprofit organization thatthe naturally raised turkey farm-
ers it works with to determine
how to be nimble despite having
begun to raise their birds months
ago.
The United States is the
world’s largest turkey producer
and its l argest exporter, with
10 percent of production going
abroad, according to the USDA.
Turkey consumption has d ou-
bled since 1970, when Americans
ate eight pounds per capita. In
2019, domestic consumption of
turkey reached 5.3 billion
pounds, 1 6 pounds per person,
according to the USDA. Turkey
production was valued at
$4.3 billion in 2019.
But this year, Butterball, one of
the country’s largest producers of
turkey products, projects a siz-
able increase in “immediate-fam-
ily-only” celebrations, according
to spokeswoman Christa Leupen.
The specifics of what dinner
may look like has shifted as well.
Butterball said its research sug-
gests consumers are looking for
ways to make Thanksgiving easi-
er or simpler and are open to
premade sides and reducing the
number of visits to the store.
The Butterball Turkey Talk
Line, which for 39 years has been
answering consumers’ Thanks-
giving cooking questions, is pre-
dicting greater demand than ever
from panicked first-time cooks
asking about thawing times and
cooking temps.
The Kroger grocery chain, also
anticipating an uptick in first-
time holiday cooks, projects that
an increase in demand for other,ers between work stations, laying
in personal protective equipment
for workers and putting social
distancing protocols in place.
And in the fresh turkey busi-
ness, where timing is everything,
an outbreak could shut him
down.
Cliff Pollard, founder of Cream
Co. Meats, a USDA-certified pro-
cessing facility based in Oakland,
Calif., says the biggest risk right
now for turkey farmers is slaugh-
ter. Meat-processing facilities
have witnessed massive corona-
virus outbreaks in recent
months, prompting closures,
slower line speeds and even the
destruction of live animals that
had nowhere to be processed.
This will be no different for the
annual holiday turkey harvest.
“For the small, sustainable
farmers who raise a certain num-
ber of turkeys to sell fresh just for
Thanksgiving, that’s going to be a
problem this year. There’s going
to be a huge bottleneck in terms
of what those ranchers do. The
biggest negative impact will be
on the smaller growers who com-
mitted to their chicks in January.”
Small, fresh turkey producers
have minimums at the slaughter-
house, Pollard says.
“Typically, in the 300- to 500-
flock range, you have to bring all
your birds in at once and have
them slaughtered at the same
time. There’s a lot of coordination
on the ground — cold storage,
packaging, transportation — a lot
goes into the timing of Thanks-
giving,” he says. His company has
been discussing next steps withharvesting and processing costs;
bags and boxes for packaging
turkeys — the list is long.
Other animal proteins have a
12-month sales cycle; turkeys’
rhythm is more staccato.
Growers can’t just harvest
birds younger to keep them
smaller, and a pivot to frozen is
not practical or financially feasi-
ble for Bowman. Fresh turkey
requires special handling, has its
own supply chain and commands
a much higher price than frozen.
Bowman’s fresh turkeys go for
about $3.69 per pound retail, and
he has a special line of Non-GMO
Project Verified, free-range whole
turkeys retailing for about $4.19
per pound. If everything goes
right with Bowman’s 70,000 tur-
keys, that’s more than $4 million
in sales. Frozen commodity tur-
keys, on the other hand, can be $1
per pound or less, sometimes
even free, with grocery stores
using them frequently as a loss
leader to get folks into stores for
the rest of the holiday’s myriad
ingredients.
Bowman has his own Agricul-
ture Department slaughter facili-
ty. For harvesting, he ramps up
his employees from about 30 to
130, half of whom are returning
seasonal employees, and the oth-
er half must be trained from
scratch. Turkey processing, he
says, is a manual endeavor, with
little automation. There is too
much variation from bird to bird
to allow for machine work — so
it’s evisceration, scalding, pick-
ing, etc., by hand. He says that
this year, they are adding divid-retailers who typically solidify
their plans months ahead of the
holiday season.
At the country’s 2,500 turkey
farms, farmers are trying to pre-
dict demand and processing
schedules, fearing they will be
stuck with too many big turkeys
and not enough small ones. Pro-
cessing plant operators, contend-
ing with a shorter harvest win-
dow and greater handwork in the
slaughterhouse, are trying to re-
duce their workers’ vulnerability
to the coronavirus outbreaks that
have ravaged poultry and beef
processing plants.
Retailers are scrambling to
pivot in real time to more fin-
ished meals-to-go, turkey-by-the-
pound, turkey parts or even
plant-based products to accom-
modate shifts in demand.
In New Carlisle, Ohio, about an
hour north of Cincinnati, Drew
Bowman raises 70,000 free-range
turkeys annually on 145 acres at
Bowman & Landes Turkeys. In a
normal year, 40 percent of Bow-
man’s business takes place in
November and December for hol-
iday meals.
“We always get anxious before
the holidays. It’s our busiest time
of the year by far, with more work
to be done, longer hours, and
there are always things that can
go wrong,” Bowman says. “But
just like any other person, this
has been a year with a lot of
emotions, with so much uncer-
tainty, and as a small-business
owner, it keeps you up at night
worrying about the ramifica-
tions. There are a lot of un-
knowns for us right now.”
Outside Thanksgiving season,
Bowman’s sales of turkey breast
evaporated when demand dried
up from colleges and other
wholesale food-service custom-
ers. Cancellations of state fairs,
theme parks and Renaissance
festivals destroyed the market for
turkey legs.
“Our whole business model is
built around having fresh tur-
keys. We’re not in the frozen
turkey business,” Bowman says.
They have 10 flocks, orders
placed at the hatchery a year in
advance so that in the weeks
before Thanksgiving, the birds
mature to a range of sizes.
For the holidays, Bowman usu-
ally raises 80 percent hens (fe-
males) and 20 percent toms
(males), which grow much bigger
— median hen size is 16 pounds,
while toms are over 20. Demand
will skew smaller this year, but he
committed to his gender split
long before the pandemic, and
there is not much he can do to
slow down growth, he says.
“We didn’t have the foresight
that there might be changed
consumer preferences,” he says.
“And if you’re growing a tom, if
you kill it early, it’s going to be
very bony and not appetizing-
looking. They don’t have a lot of
meat on their bones when they
are smaller.”
Bowman’s input costs are
fixed: purchasing the turkey
poults (the babies, which he buys
1 day old from a hatchery in
Canada); mixing, grinding and
hauling vegetarian feed to the
turkeys; employees to move all
outdoor shelters; feed and water
to care for turkeys on the range;
TURKEYS FROM A1
Smaller turkeys and plant-based substitutes are in high demand, retailers say
MADDIE MCGARVEY FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Bowman & Landes Turkeys in New Carlisle, Ohio, on Sept. 18. For harvesting, the facility ramps up from 30 to 130 employees, half of whom are returning seasonal workers.S0115-6x1.25
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